Songs of the Disloyal
by Feral Phoenix
Summary: Oneshot. On the night before the Organization splits apart for good, Axel stays awake and wanders... and wonders... and regrets. A somewhat more serious side to Axel that we rarely see. Contains a little bit of AxR and XxM.


Songs of the Disloyal: Soul's Refrain

DISCLAIMER: Don't own KHII or the Organization. I'm just writing because Axel needs as many bittersweet angst drabbles as he can get… and, okay, to exploit and explore what may be one of the crackest of all crack pairings in KHII fandom. Whatever, don't sue me. My muses will eat you.

It's midnight; the last night before we leave and break with our own hands the shining hope of our growing people.

The others are all asleep. I walk through the halls alone, feeling the empty echo of my nonexistence as I have ever since _he _left.

In the end, none of us could stop Roxas. I think that in the murky depths of the so-called heartlessness that even we fear to probe, none of us really wanted to, maybe not even me. We all know how it feels, after all. The whole of the Nobodies can understand that awful ache of being incomplete, and the inexorable driving need to _know._

I can feel the faint memories of the man I was born from, still in my heart. He died long ago after leaving his body and mine behind and becoming a Heartless, and I know that humanity is probably better off without him—he most definitely wasn't the kind of person you would want around, continuing your kind. But still, at least I have some kind of knowledge of where I came from. No matter how deep he probed, Roxas couldn't remember anything. He was our sweet-natured mystery child, rendering our order complete.

He completed us, and now without him we are falling apart.

In the end, the need to _know _at least something about his Other, the boy named Sora who sealed the dark door of Kingdom Hearts shut, drove Roxas away, despite everything he swore to when he became the thirteenth of our number. It never bothered me before that I don't have a heart or an identity, though it caused me the same hollow unease as it did the others. Roxas filled the empty spaces inside me with his small smiles and the warmth of his body against mine, the faint smell of summer in his hair and the open blue of his eyes.

Xemnas always tells us that Nobodies have no emotions, but I know for a fact that it's a lie. He's gone through more than any of us ever have, and he's sealed himself off almost completely from his, as he believes we all should do. Emotions are a terrible thing to have. We can't feel them nearly as strongly as those with hearts do, but we feel them strongly enough.

Roxas left and he took part of me with him, and I've been slowly dying ever since.

I can understand where Xemnas is coming from. And yet, if we sacrifice everything we half-feel until we have hearts of our own, wouldn't that make us the same as the Heartless? Wouldn't we just become mindless soldiers, slaves to our own instinctual desire to have a heart, _any _heart, _right now? _Most Nobodies have only the vaguest vestige of humanity, but that sliver of life in our otherwise meaningless nonexistence is what makes us capable of dreaming of a day when things will be better.

Love is something too painful to hold on to, but it's something I'm too selfish to let go of.

And I know that I'm not the only one.

Each of us grasps tightly to the fragments of true life that might as well be shards of broken glass, considering the pain they cause us in our inhumanity. Demyx with his music, Luxord and his grandiose games, Larxene's fickle temper, Zexion's moods… we're caught in between two extremes and it's a place of torment for us.

We thirteen were united by the single desire to grant hope to our hopeless race, growing ever so slowly as the Heartless infiltrated the worlds. But Roxas has left us and the desires of our leaders take us in entirely different directions.

I stop outside the half-opened door to Xemnas' temporary chambers.

Marluxia has offered his mute farewell and the only apology he can voice so far, perhaps the only apology he can ever voice in our half-lives. Dark robes stripped away, he lies with the leader he'll betray so soon, their bodies entwined within the wreckage of the bed linens. Their tangled limbs shift as they breathe, and a peace that I envy bitterly drifts over their faces, imbuing their shape with a calm serenity that Nobodies can only achieve in sleep. Marluxia's fair cheek rests against Xemnas' dark chest, with his soft blood-colored hair spilling over his face and the nape of his neck. Xemnas, in turn, lies still with his arms loosely around Marluxia, almost childishly holding him close even now. It's almost as if he knows already and is acting from some deep-seated fear of losing Marluxia forever.

But Xemnas couldn't possibly know that this is his and Marluxia's last night as lovers. That the arguments that have been causing a rift between the halves of our core have taken a deeper toll that most of the others could never conceive. That even now, the man that some tiny well-defended corner of his being is desperately in love with has laced the seeds of betrayal through our Organization.

Marluxia knows it very well. Their moans and cries echoed through the lonely halls of this old mansion for hour after hour before they finally slept. This is the only thing he can do to say goodbye.

I'm cold and the ache called loneliness throbs in my chest. No matter how close my hands get to the fire it's my nature to love, they've felt frozen ever since Roxas' warmth left my arms, the day he walked away for good.

Larxene—acting the part of the nagging but perhaps worried sister—has allowed me slightly closer to her since then, but it's not the same. Her harsh edges are nothing like the still-innocent softness Roxas possessed. But that's not the kind of thing I could ever tell her. She does what she can. We all do what we can.

I could never hate him for it, but Roxas broke me, and the Organization too, with his departure. It's something we all understand.

The Organization was always our family. And no family divided by distance or differences of interest can survive for long. The unity between the twelve of us left has been weakening, becoming the equivalent of a sick animal stalked and harried by persistent beasts of prey.

It's something frail and ailing and ready to fall for good.

We're destroying ourselves with our own hands, and with it will go the hope of our people.

Larxene believes in Marluxia's ideals. Marluxia himself has transferred his belief from Xemnas to his own plans. And in the nature of belief, Zexion, Lexaeus, and Vexen are ready to follow them.

The others' belief in Xemnas is too strong for them to ever betray him.

I don't believe in Xemnas or Marluxia, not really. But I prefer Marluxia to Xemnas so I'm going with him, anyway.

What do I believe in?

I believed in a warmth that made me feel whole, in the pale blue of a fragile morning sky in winter and the contrasting scent of summer that lingered around someone who was still pure in my eyes. I believed in the one person who could make me believe in the goodness of love.

I believed in Roxas.

I loved Roxas.

And gone he may be, dead or off in places where I'll never see him again, but I love him still. Some part of me always will.

My restless roaming takes me past the white room.

I glance in at our unknowing prisoner. Namine, too, is asleep; a pale form curled up tightly in her dreamlike cage. Our betrayal will affect her as well; she'll be coming with us if we're going to fulfill Marluxia's plan. Xemnas wanted to use her ability to shift the memories of others to build our army. Marluxia is after bigger fish, of course. He'll be using her for his own needs.

She's still so much more of a child than Roxas, though Xemnas tells us they were likely "born" around the same time. Like him, a creature still pure and innocent… unlike him, born from the empty shell of a princess.

And like him, a tool that can be used.

The rift that will become a split between us will end its work soon.

Namine, along with each of the twelve remaining members of Organization XIII, will be swept off with the tides.

Where those tides will lead me, I'm still not certain. My own façade still holds, and my erstwhile allies don't yet know what all of this is doing to me. They accept my false smiles and the forced appearance of cheer I'm known for.

But I have my own foolish, selfish hope.

Nobodies don't have hearts, it's true. But I believe that unlike the Heartless, we have souls.

And my soul has revealed to me my own desperate desires.

If there's any chance that I could meet Roxas again, I have to take it.

No matter how bloodstained my hands become or how many hopes and lives I've shattered, I have to take it.

And I don't expect to be forgiven for choosing this road.

:owari:


End file.
